Blu-ray discs

It took a while, but I finally convinced my new
computer (not the exact model) to play a blu-ray disc. (The problem was that the
system as shipped needed at least two upgrades. It wasn’t
trivial to set up the sound either.)

The picture on blu-ray is indeed better than with a standard
DVD, and I don’t have a problem with paying Netflix an extra
$2/month to get blu-ray discs when they have them.

Unfortunately, the plan is to move this computer upstairs to be
my desktop. I don’t think the old computer is powerful enough to
play blu-ray even if I bought it a drive. So I’ll probably go
back to watching regular dvd’s when I finish setting up this
one.

If I decide after doing that that I miss the blu-ray enough to
buy a player, I’ll let you know. Of course, ideally I would be
able to play the disc on the computer upstairs and watch it on
the TV downstairs, but I think they work pretty hard to stop you
doing things like that. I’ll definitely let you know if I figure
that one out.

In case you’re wondering, the movie I watched was Slumdog
Millionaire. I was a bit disappointed, given how much some
of the people I know had liked it. It was a good movie, with
one likable character, and good acting and photography, but it
was just a Hollywood movie. It was about an interesting
culture, but didn’t really have anything very enlightening to
say about that culture.

The advantage of watching this kind of movie at home
instead of in the theater is
that you can go feed the dog during the scene where they gouge
the child’s eyes out. So it is expecially nice to have the
extra resolution on a movie where there’s one scene you want to skip.